LBJ's Texas White House "Our Heart's Home"

CHAPTER 7 A Slice of Real America:
Showcasing the Ranch during the Presidency

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During Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency, the LBJ Ranch came to serve many functions. Besides its numerous official capacities— ranging from a retreat to the location of cabinet-level meetings— the ranch was the scene of a grand social life, formal and informal, loaded with political and symbolic significance for both the American public and the people of the world. Affairs of state were held along the Pedernales River, and important national and international personages spent time there, enjoying the beauty of the Hill Country and negotiating with this self-invented gentleman-rancher-turned-president who was as much a creature of the halls of Congress as of the Hill Country of Texas. Against the serene backdrop of the river and the Hill Country, the president reaffirmed his roots in a mythical America that ordinary people could understand and that foreign dignitaries found genuine.

In this process, the ranch again proved to be a malleable tool for the ever-inventive Johnson. As the location of affairs of state, the Texas ranch continued to serve in the role of a remote White House, but such affairs were different from any presidential event ever staged in Washington, D.C. Instead of the formal and sometimes officious tone of the nation's capital, guests at ranch affairs saw a mythologized rural America that emphasized preindustrial relationships: ties of family, of place, and of honor. This attractive image presented only the best of the rural experience, glossing over its poverty and deprivation; Johnson offered this image not only as a view of his ranch but of his administration and worldview as well. It was, as
W. D. Taylor of The New York Herald-Tribune wrote, "barbecue diplomacy," juxtaposing two words generally perceived to have little in common. Once again, Johnson transformed his ranch to suit his new circumstances. In a typical instance, Horace Busby, a longtime Johnson aide, suggested that the guest list for an affair of state, the 1964 visit of Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, "be oriented nationally, not regionally. . . . [This] would win significant national attention—and be a significant political plus in Texas."¹ Again, in the skillful hands of his staff, the ranch came to represent the nation and its values even more than it previously had.

In his quest to project an image of himself as a typical man in extraordinary circumstances, Johnson relied on a specific kind of imagery. An admirer of Harry S. Truman, another "commoner" turned president, Johnson played on the same kind of "plain folk" sentiments that were crucial to Truman's success. Johnson's speech, his actions, his way of thinking seemed to millions of Americans to be much like their own. This president was not a graduate of an Ivy League school nor heir to a great fortune. He spoke colloquially, metaphorically, in the rough and sometimes crude speech of rural America. What he had, Johnson's tone, tenor, and posture announced, he had earned by the sweat of his brow. Johnson affirmed this stance as he utilized the ranch, bringing all manner of people to it and showing them a stereotypical if not altogether real "Texas good time."

Characteristic of social engagements at the ranch was a type of event that Johnson turned into an institution to suit his purposes: the LBJ Ranch barbecue. Usually held in the grove by the Pedernales River, these affairs were renowned for food, music, libation, and the opportunity for discussion that they inevitably included. Despite their pretext of informality, the barbecues were created in a systematic fashion to serve real and symbolic purposes. These events—of which there were almost one hundred during the five years of the Johnson presidency, some entertaining as many as five hundred people—became symbols of Johnson, his presidency, and the real United States so often obscure to the foreign visitors who only saw American cities. Johnson's rural "spread" and his use of it for entertainment enhanced a uniquely American mythology that the world found more appealing than the realities of an urban, industrial nation.. Here was an America seemingly comprised of people who worked for a living, had few if any pretensions, and appreciated and embraced simplicity, order, and community. It was an idyllic vision, necessarily inaccurate but carrying much meaning and symbolic weight.

To Europeans especially, and foreign visitors in general, the ranch served as a symbol of this mythically genuine America, where people were "just plain folk" and a handshake was as good as a written contract. It was as if the world of the Western movie had come to life. The conviviality of the Johnson barbecues and the manufactured ambience of authenticity created a seductive environment that disarmed even the most suspicious of visitors. In this setting, Johnson could work his personal magic and could utilize the charisma that underlay his political career with a style and comfort level that he simply did not possess in the nation's capital. In the setting at the ranch, under the tents from which the aroma of barbecued pork and beef emanated, Johnson seemed at home, genuine in a manner foreign to the Washington, D.C., environment. He was a real American in the real America—a seductive concept for Europeans familiar with American mythology as well as for national leaders from elsewhere around the globe.

The ranch and the Texas experience also served as a backdrop for the enactment of the policies closest to Johnson's heart. The rural setting, with its message of innocence and, in Johnson's manufactured personal history, of poverty overcome, had a certain appeal to the American public. During the cultural revolution that swept the nation during the late 1960s, the rural American past acquired an almost nostalgic meaning for youth that was ironically shared by the older public, increasingly distant from rural roots but enamored of them in an age of rapid change. The family farm was idolized; the rural life, despite the many hardships associated with it even in the most benign accounts, was seen as somehow more pure than the struggle for a living in the city. Rural places spoke of roots and meaning, precious commodities amid the uproar of the decade.² That sense became pervasive; any event that called on such symbols played well with a wide segment of the public. The astute Johnson was keenly aware of the cultural advantages of his geographic location and of the meaning that the public and his guests invested in his ranch along the Pedernales River. Johnson utilized this idyllic setting and the Hill Country around it on even the slightest pretext.

In events such as the barbecues, LBJ built iconographic significance for the ranch and the Hill Country. The ranch was a kind of clay to this master of symbolism. The Hill Country property could serve as a stage for the Great Society and its programs, illustrating the poverty typical during Johnson's youth and the need for programs to alleviate the social and economic problems that resulted. This view, this symbolism, was an updated version of New Deal ideology, filtered through rural Texas. Bills such as the Education Bill of 1965, signed in the Junction Schoolhouse, were in a direct line from the construction of the Buchanan Dam in the Hill Country and the creation of the Rural Electrification Administration, pieces of legislation reflecting goals that were at the very core of Johnson's political programs and that demonstrated his success.³ The barbecues and other major official social events at the ranch reflected Johnson's personal tastes and highlighted the difference between rural, kinship-based sociality and the formal world of Washington, D.C. The ranch became a cultural symbol that represented the "real America" to the television cameras, one that reminded the nation of roots that it had shed but that in times of turmoil it sorely missed.

Throughout Johnson's years in the Senate and the vice presidency, barbecues had been a characteristic feature of entertainment at the ranch. The barbecues "fit LBJ's style," Cactus Pryor remarked, for they expressed the feel of Texas hospitality and entertainment as opposed to the formality of Washington, D.C., high culture. In one instance, Johnson took a group of United Nations ambassadors on a horseback ride around the ranch before a barbecue; Johnson rode a Tennessee Walker, his personal favorite among horse breeds, while the ambassadors, certain that they were no longer in New York City, rode cow ponies. Johnson liked a western atmosphere for the barbecues, with round tables, checkered tablecloths, and coal-oil lanterns. Servers wore western attire, although security officials dressed in their normal business suits. Johnson and his staff strove for an authentic ambience, dictated as much by popular culture's Western films as by the realities of the experience of nineteenth-century Texas. The barbecues "had the look and feel of a chuck wagon dinner," Pryor recalled, something many visitors understood as part of the uplifting, moral, and character-building experience of the mythical cattle drive.⁴

The barbecues became structured, following a clear and distinct pattern that demonstrated and conveyed exactly what Johnson wanted. Through a series of barbecues in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the ranch staff developed a formula that governed everything from the food to the atmosphere. This formula included the caterer, for important events almost always Fort Worth barbecue impresario Walter Jetton; the location in the grove by the river; and the decision to have Cactus Pryor, a long-time Johnson employee and humorist in the Will Rogers tradition, serve as master of ceremonies.⁵ The setting by the Pedernales River, the food, and the ambience were Texas through and through.

On some occasions, the barbecues became the setting for a seemingly simple but highly charged historical reenactment. At Johnson's request, hired actors, ranch hands, volunteers, and neighbors would depict a highly stylized settling of Texas, "with the early Spaniards in costume coming down the Pedernales River and the friars and the Indians meeting them," remembered Pryor. Stagecoaches, buckboard wagons, and Anglo-American settlement followed. This format was adapted to each specific guest list. Texans in the audience found a rendition that exalted their traditions, while those from other parts of the nation and the world learned about the history Texans fashioned for themselves from a decidedly Texan perspective. These were, in the words of John Graves, an astute observer of his native state and its people, a "proud and vain people," possessed of a sense of self-righteousness and mission inherited from their nineteenth-century ancestors.⁶

To outsiders, this xenophobia about mythic roots was at once the most attractive and the most repelling facet of Texas. Texans were a breed apart, and nativity in the state created an arrogance and reverence for the Lone Star State that at first seemed quaint to people from other places. Texans were sure that their state was best and brooked little discussion of the merits of the rest of the world, a subtheme in almost any conversation between a visitor and any native. The ranch reenactment reinforced this sentiment in a less abrasive fashion than might have occurred in ordinary conversation. On their home turf, Texans were entitled to enact their myths, and the pageantry of the reenactment and the barbecue became intertwined examples of state heritage.

But Texans also ran hard against other American myths. In the 1960s, Texas was still far from the American political and cultural mainstream, even farther because of its association with the segregationist South in the middle of the civil rights revolution. Although U.S. politics were changing, its symbols remained northeastern in character and origin, its orientation focused on the prosperity brought by industrialization, and its ideas shaped by the concept of a nation rather than by the integrity and domain of an individual state. The press concentrated on New York and Washington, D.C.; what was sophisticated and urbane emanated from the two seaboard coasts, east and west. To many visitors to Texas and the LBJ Ranch—those who saw the reenactment and those who did not—the chauvinism and what could be labeled the arrogance of Texans were poorly masked and thoroughly unjustified.

But Johnson's barbecues often transcended such difficulties in cultural understanding and transmission. The westernness of the barbecues was in a way generic; they represented not only Texas within their form and format but every western place and indeed every Western movie. They called on icons that any American and many educated foreigners understood, symbols communicated to the global village that the world had become, symbols that were abundantly clear to anyone who had ever seen a film about the U.S. West or imbibed the mythos of the nation. As a result of their success at communicating myth in the barbecues, Johnson's staff received a seemingly endless string of requests from individuals and organizations for information about how to stage their own Johnson-style barbecues.⁷ At Johnson's ranch, Texas became the West in the same manner that Johnson had made himself into a westerner during the 1950s.

The initial barbecues during the Johnson presidency were even more meaningful in their iconographic impact than previous efforts had been, but they also reflected some of Johnson's overall difficulties with his new office. The senatorial and vice presidential barbecues had been regional in conception, aimed at showing domestic and foreign visitors the culture and attributes of Texas. Presidential barbecues, like any other presidential function, were an articulation of the nation and represented the whole instead of one part of the United States. This meant that the features of such events had to be not only characteristic but extraordinary. Unlike the vice presidential barbecues, which accentuated regionalism and were designed for a national audience only as an afterthought, the presidential barbecues had national and international meaning built into their very structure. The ceremonial and official demands of the presidency diluted the Texas side of the experience, making it conform as much to standards of diplomatic protocol as to those of Texas, the Hill Country, and the ranch.

The visit of Ludwig Erhard, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, was the first major presidential gala in the Hill Country and served to highlight the difficulties involved in this changed symbolism. Erhard spent December 28 and 29 of 1963 in the Hill Country, on the first official state visit to the Texas home of the new president. He came to engage in a serious discussion concerning mutual issues such as the Soviet threat, the Berlin Wall, and other matters of international politics. Some news writers felt this to be a meeting of great importance; "Johnson and Erhard Face Decision Hour," a headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer read on December 27, 1963. Other newspapers, such as The Wall Street Journal, regarded the visit as an opportunity for Johnson to assert his claim on the presidency.⁸

For Johnson, the Erhard visit was a pivotal moment. The role of West Germany in the postwar world had changed greatly since the late 1940s, and the importance of the country as a bulwark against Soviet expansion had dramatically increased. With the exception of finicky France and its dynamic leader, Charles de Gaulle, western European countries had become staunch U.S. allies, for the threat of the Soviets loomed large. American willingness to oppose the Soviets at Berlin contributed to positive feelings between the United States and West Germany, but the relationship required continuous maintenance in the face of changing Soviet policy. Both Erhard and Johnson had recently ascended to the top positions in their respective countries, and the Hill Country meeting showcased their abilities as statesmen.

After the hectic period in Washington, D.C., following the Kennedy assassination, the Johnsons had finally reached the ranch on December 24, two weeks later than their scheduled arrival. As they left their plane, Lady Bird Johnson could see workmen preparing the facilities for Erhard's arrival. Bess Abell, Lady Bird Johnson's social secretary; Liz Carpenter, press secretary and staff director for the first lady; Pierre Salinger, the White House press secretary and a holdover from the Kennedy administration; and a number of stewards arrived in Texas on December 26 to assist in
the preparations. The stewards were housed in the guest house and
the Scharnhorst ranch house. Other logistical questions soon arose to be
addressed.⁹

At the same time, many of Johnson's advisors began to arrive. Secretary of State Dean Rusk arrived on December 26, meeting with previous arrivals Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman; Special Assistant to the President for National Security, McGeorge Bundy; and George McGhee, the U.S. ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. Briefings and other preliminary meetings to prepare the Americans for the arrival of the Germans took place. "Two by two and three by three and in groups they huddled with Lyndon and talked, and moved around the ranch," Lady Bird Johnson remembered.¹⁰

Small groups were a luxury not afforded the first lady, who had to prepare for five busloads of the press—as many as two hundred reporters—that were expected at 2:00 p.m. on December 26. The press had been informed as early as December 15 that they would have little leeway in covering ranch events; they would be quartered in Austin, about sixty-five miles from the ranch, and only reporters on official buses would be allowed onto the ranch grounds. Despite grumbling, the reporters had no option. They had to cover the story, and if the only way they could get to the ranch was in an official bus, then they accepted the need to travel in that manner. But the circumstances did not make them feel warmly toward the new administration.¹¹

At the ranch, Salinger acted as "top sergeant," Lady Bird Johnson wrote, herding the passengers from the five Greyhound buses to three school buses for a tour of the Welds and pastures. Ranch foreman Dale Malechek served as guide for the lead bus, with Lady Bird Johnson taking the second and the—as the first lady called her—"obliging dear" Lynda Johnson taking the third. Those who were interested in ranching and agriculture were directed to Malechek's bus. Lady Bird and Lynda Johnson told their audiences about the Johnson family history and about buying and renovating the ranch. For most reporters in the presidential corps, it was the first time they had ever seen the ranch. Many were impressed at its beauty, and the enthusiasm of Lady Bird and Lynda Johnson and the knowledge of Dale Malechek were infectious. "You enjoy talking about what you love," Lady Bird Johnson wrote with her characteristic grace, "and I love this place."¹²

After the tour, Lyndon Johnson engaged in a homey kind of gesture designed to quell any resentment members of the press might feel about their treatment. Since many were on their first official visit—for many the first time they had ever seen the Lone Star State—Johnson planned a mini-barbecue for the press. In an effort to curry favor, Johnson took on his persona of an ordinary rancher and, with a dose of Texas hospitality, sought to make the members of the press comfortable. Walter Jetton had already begun to cook for the big Erhard barbecue the following day, and the Johnsons treated the press to a sampling of the barbecue, coffee, and beer. It was a sunny winter day, and everyone settled down on bales of hay near the grove or under the trees to talk. Lyndon Johnson pulled up in his convertible—with the top down—and joined the gathering, bringing along Rusk, Freeman, and Thomas C. Mann, the chief Latin American affairs coordinator. The president stood on a bale of hay and addressed the gathering, and the informal barbecue "turned into an all-around press conference."¹³

The next morning, the German chancellor and his entourage arrived at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin. It was a "beautiful blue and gold day," Lady Bird Johnson remembered, with flags flapping in the breeze and the troops lined up to be reviewed. A military band was present, and a red carpet awaited the arrival of the chancellor's airplane. The plane overshot the red carpet, and the dignitaries had to "hop around a few feet," Lady Bird Johnson remembered, to reach the ceremonial entry. After the customary events, including brief speeches by Johnson and Erhard, the almost forty-person official German entourage boarded helicopters and flew to the Hill Country. An eight-car motorcade slowly brought the Germans through Fredericksburg, in the heart of the German-Texan Hill Country. A forty-foot-tall sign reading "Willkommen" graced the entry to the town. After the Germans arrived at the ranch, fourteen of the most important negotiators and leaders were treated to a luncheon, and official talks proceeded throughout the afternoon. A stag dinner for the entourage followed that evening. The guest list of twenty-nine included every major dignitary in both groups. Even Lady Bird Johnson was excluded from the gender-segregated festivities; she stood outside on the porch and listened through the window. The menu of shrimp mousse, filet of beef Texanna, potatoes casserol, and creamed spinach was topped off with pecan pie for desert. Dom Perignon 1955 was the libation of the evening. State gifts were exchanged as Ezra Rachlin—a former child prodigy and native of Berlin, now the leader of the Austin Symphony Orchestra—played the piano and Linda Loftis—a former Miss Texas and a talented vocalist—sang German lieder and, by coincidence, a Puccini aria that happened to be Erhard's favorite. The chancellor, who had trained as a concert pianist, was intrigued and enchanted. After Loftis finished singing, Erhard stood, selected a yellow rose from a vase, presented it to the singer, bowed, and kissed her hand.¹⁴

One of the gifts that the Johnsons presented to Erhard accentuated the ties between Texas and West Germany. The German influence in the Hill Country was apparent to all observers. "There are few places in America where the German tradition of 125 years ago is so pronounced or so well preserved," newsman and Johnson friend Houston Harte wrote. "Here stand the stone houses laid with trowels brought to this new homeland from the iron mongers of Germany." To add substance to the imagery, the Johnsons had bound a number of poems written by Hulda Saenger Walter, a young German immigrant to Texas during the 1840s whose family settled in Fredericksburg. She wrote of the travails her family experienced in their new land, of how hard they had to labor, and of how they missed their home in Germany. Lady Bird Johnson added a letter to the chancellor's wife with the gift, expressing her regret that Mrs. Erhard had not been able to make the trip.¹⁵ Such a gift reinforced the ties that the negotiators worked so hard to maintain and subtly reiterated the kinship between Germans and Texans. It was a characteristic Johnson gesture, one that was generous and meaningful at the same time that it cultivated relationships.

Sunday dawned clear, beautiful, and very cold, and Lady Bird Johnson gave thanks that the first presidential barbecue, planned as the centerpiece of the trip, was scheduled for the Stonewall High School gymnasium instead of the grove by the river, which was the typical location for such events. According to Liz Carpenter, the decision to hold the event in the gym resulted from Bess Abell's consultation with Dr. Irving Krick, a Palm Springs, California, meteorologist, who had predicted cold weather. The barbecue was central to Johnson's conception of a trip to the ranch, for it allowed the president to highlight the Texas and western traditions that he found had so much appeal. Even the risk of cold wet winter weather could not dissuade him, so after Krick suggested that the weather might not cooperate, the barbecue was scheduled for an indoor venue. Austin interior designer Harold Eichenbaum was engaged to decorate the gym. By Sunday, December 29, workmen had spent three full days fulfilling Eichenbaum's plans to give the gym the authentic feel that Johnson insisted upon for his barbecues.¹⁶

The Stonewall High School gymnasium was typical of such structures across the nation. In small towns, the gymnasium was a malleable location. It was often the focus of local pride as well as of much activity. The school's sports teams played there, and it fulfilled a social function as well. Gyms served as community centers and meeting places, and within their walls almost every kind of small-town social, political, and cultural event took place. A gym housed everything from community bake sales to school pep rallies, but nothing like this—the arrival of a foreign head of state from the ancestral homeland of many Hill Country residents—had ever happened at the Stonewall High School gym.

The gym was transformed for the event. By the Sunday morning of the barbecue, workmen had spent countless hours hammering and sawing to create an outdoor western atmosphere underneath the basketball hoops and the overhead lights that were covered with wire to prevent errant balls from breaking bulbs. Liz Carpenter added bales of hay to create what she labeled "artistic rustic fashion." Walter Jetton's saddles, lariats, and red lanterns augmented the hay. Even Lady Bird Johnson found the ambience of the gym "transformed; bunting was everywhere," she recalled, and the German flag and national colors adorned the room. A mariachi band greeted the guests outside the door, adding another ethnic flavor of Texas to the event.¹⁷

After much discussion, Van Cliburn, a distinguished international classical pianist who had been raised in Fort Worth, Texas, had been selected to perform, a choice dictated by Erhard's youthful desire to be a concert pianist. According to Cactus Pryor, Liz Carpenter initially asked him to arrange the typical array of country musicians who had played at previous ranch events. "Liz, wouldn't this be a good opportunity to display to the world that Johnson isn't a hick, a hillbilly, that Texans are something besides cowboys and fiddle bands?" Pryor recalled asking Carpenter. "Why don't we get Van Cliburn down?" "But this is a barbecue," Carpenter responded. "We can't present Cliburn at a barbecue." Pryor persuaded her that nothing would be more beautiful than Cliburn playing under the trees with the Pedernales River in the background, and Carpenter assented. After Lady Bird Johnson approved the idea, Cliburn was engaged to perform. When Cliburn arrived and found he was expected to wear a red checkered shirt and jeans while he played, he balked. His preference was white tie and tails, his typical concert performance apparel. "But Van, they haven't ever seen a tuxedo in Stonewall," Carpenter pleaded. "This is a concert for the chancellor of Germany," he retorted. "But you've never seen Stonewall!" she and Bess Abell shouted back. After much discussion, Cliburn consented to wear a business suit, a compromise that everyone accepted.¹⁸

The food was typically delicious. Walter Jetton prepared a meal of barbecued spare ribs, cole slaw, and pinto beans, although in his introduction of guests Pryor apologized to Erhard because Jetton had not been able to find a recipe for barbecued sauerkraut. "Plenty of beer," was available, Lady Bird Johnson recalled, served from large barrels made by area resident Harry Jersig. Hot apricot pie and coffee comprised desert, and the almost three hundred guests ate heartily. Interspersed among the international and national visitors and the White House, German, and local press were approximately seventy-five Texas dignitaries. Four Texas state senators and their wives attended, as did Johnson friends and colleagues Homer Throneberry, Horace Busby, Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr, and their wives. Robert Kleberg and Jay Taylor represented the Texas cattle industry, while Chancellor and Mrs. Harry Ransom of the University of Texas system, legendary University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal and his wife, and Texas folklorist laureate J. Frank Dobie and his wife also attended. Johnson's nearest neighbor, Simon J. Burg, sat at the head table.¹⁹

As the meal continued, Johnson became characteristically restless and sought to begin the entertainment. Liz Carpenter noticed the president's agitation and rushed to Cactus Pryor, telling him to hurry over and introduce the president. Pryor went to Johnson and requested the microphone. "What for?" asked the president. Pryor explained that he needed to present Johnson. "Why do you have to present me?" Johnson asked. Pryor finally persuaded him to give up the microphone, and the formal program began. There were introductions and toasts all around as Lyndon Johnson introduced the important guests and said a few words about each. According to Lady Bird Johnson, he extemporized all his remarks. Johnson had arranged for Texas-style cowboy hats to be given as gifts to the German entourage and the reporters who accompanied them. The gifts sat in the corner of the gym, awaiting their moment. But the president decided that he wanted each recipient to try his on. The hats were not yet creased, and Liz Carpenter remembered being sent to "whack them in just the right place so they shape up nicely." After two or three tries, it was apparent that she lacked the requisite experience, and Johnson sent A. W. Moursand to join her. The experienced Moursand did most of the creasing as a chagrined Carpenter looked on. Johnson then personally fitted each of the prominent Germans, placing a ten-gallon—or forty-liter—hat on their heads to determine if the Stetsons Wt. Erhard's size was perfect, but the first hat Johnson placed on the head of Dr. Karl Carstens, the secretary of state of the West German Foreign Office, fell over his ears and almost obscured his face. After the hats were distributed, everyone awaited the program.²⁰

Entertainment, hosted by perennial master of ceremonies Cactus Pryor, followed the meal. A group of young Fredericksburg women presented German folk dances, to the delight of Erhard and his entourage. A folk group, the Wanderers Three, played. The Saint Mary's Catholic High School choir sang songs such as the Christmas standard "Silent Night" in German, ending with a rendition of "Deep in the Heart of Texas." As the strains of this easily identifiable song began, Erhard leaned over to Lady Bird Johnson and whispered, "we know that [one] in Germany, too."²¹

The main musical program was stunning. Wearing his unfamiliar business suit, Van Cliburn played Beethoven's Appassionata, a work by Schumann, as well as a number of other selections. Erhard and his entourage appreciated the skill and virtuosity of this accomplished musician. Despite the gravity and formality of the occasion, there were lighthearted moments. Press secretary Pierre Salinger, who had once hoped to be a pianist, took a turn after Cliburn. According to observers, he acquitted himself nicely.²²

The indoor barbecue was a rousing success. It "all melded well," Pryor recalled; "it jived." The range of music and ethnicity elicited much positive comment, and the sophisticated Erhard truly appreciated Cliburn's vast talents. The chancellor and his party received "a sense of the hospitality of this country in a setting where there were ties of kinship," Lady Bird Johnson wrote, and it seemed to the guests that they had visited an America they had never seen, much closer to the one of mythology than the urban nation most mid-twentieth-century visitors experienced. It seemed to reporters that the atmosphere at the ranch was a good one for international relations. The bridge between Bonn and Washington, D.C., that Johnson and Erhard sought "got off to a new beginning," The New York Herald-Tribune reported. "It was favored by the friendly outgoing personalities of the new President and the new Chancellor."²³

The barbecue also served as a counterpoint to the typical venues in which political discussions and high-level talks were held. Instead of being held in the White House, the hotels, or the drab government buildings of Washington, D.C., this meeting was set among the hills of Texas, the land dry from a lack of rain during the fall and early winter. The venue made the negotiations easier, while making the tone less formal. It moved these leaders from their typical regime into a far less rigid world, and according to the joint communique released after the meeting, the two leaders and their staffs engaged in a series of "frank and far-ranging talks" about common problems. Erhard and his entourage "will have something new to take home to Europe," reporter Houston Harte suggested: a different view of the United States.²⁴

Not everyone thought that the event was a complete success. U.S. Ambassador to Germany George McGhee later remarked that although Erhard enjoyed the informality of his Texas visit, the event "appeared to indicate a degree of intimacy which different people perhaps thought went too far.
. . . [T]he impression given to the Germans is that [the ranch] is a little too intimate for their Chancellor." Although McGhee found the ranch a "congenial" place for a meeting, it seemed to him too informal for the first meeting between new leaders during a stressful transition.²⁵ Accustomed to the more formal nature of the Kennedy administration, McGhee did not yet recognize how different were the symbols and protocols of the new administration.

The first presidential barbecue differed in tone from any previous one held at the ranch. During his years as senator and vice president, Johnson had used barbecues to accent his regional identity. As a "southern" politician, he initially used the barbecues as a way to highlight his increasing identification with the West instead of the South. The Stetson hats he so often gave as gifts were one example of this transition; the chuck wagon atmosphere so aptly described by Cactus Pryor another. Even during the vice presidency, the themes that ranch events illustrated were regional. The barbecue thrown for President Lopez Mateos of Mexico in 1959 was typical. With its Texan and Mexican flavor, it might as well have taken place on the border between the two lands.

The first presidential barbecue operated under a different set of conventions. Held in the winter, during the only time of year that made an indoor venue necessary, it was created not out of regional spirit but out of national obligation. Erhard's state visit had been planned before the Kennedy assassination and, in the changed climate, had to continue. The West German leader and his new American counterpart had much to discuss. The barbecue had become the social event that underlay substantive meetings, not the strictly social occasion it had often been. The addition of Van Cliburn also changed inferences about the ranch, precisely as Pryor had anticipated. A renowned international talent, Cliburn raised the level of entertainment at ranch events to new heights. Previously, regional or local musicians and entertainers had performed at barbecues; on some occasions, national country and western artists such as the Geezinslaw Brothers had played. Cliburn, however, set a new standard that linked the accomplishments of Texans outside the state to activities within it. This created a new symbolism for the ranch, a western setting with a national and international meaning. Once again, the ranch had been rapidly reconceived to meet Johnson's new status, sense of self, and social and symbolic need.

The barbecue proved as malleable as it had in the past. In an often-repeated process, the presidential barbecues became as typical of official hospitality at the ranch as had their senatorial and vice presidential predecessors. Some barbecues were elaborate, staged, and highly formalized. Others were instantaneous responses to a presidential whim. Election day in 1964 provided an example of a hastily organized barbecue. The week before, the ranch had been the scene of a campaign barbecue, a full-scale production that included a chuck wagon with an "LBJ or bust" sign painted on the side. As Lyndon Johnson drove to the polls to vote, he saw the remains of the campaign party. "What's all that junk?" Johnson asked. Told it was left over from the previous week, Johnson paused and then said, "We just might have a barbecue tomorrow for all those reporters who've been traveling with us. Might ask the Humphreys down, too." The plans were underway.²⁶

"In view of the poor physical condition of the Fourth Estate," the invitation read, "the President and Mrs. Johnson invite the Johnson and Humphrey traveling press to a barbecue." There were a few stipulations attached to the invitation: "all microphones are off, no crowd estimates will be made, [and] no copy will be filed." The barbecue was designed to be both relaxing for the press and an effort to build bridges for future political use. The traveling press corps had served the Johnsons well throughout the campaign, and the gesture seemed one of friendship, designed to get Johnson's full term as president off on the right footing with the press.²⁷

The entertainment at the presidential barbecues reflected the new standards demanded by Johnson's new position. Prior to a presidential summit meeting at Punta del Este, Uruguay, concerning the Alliance for Progress, a Kennedy-era program designed to further relations with Latin America, Johnson invited all the Latin American ambassadors to the LBJ Ranch for a barbecue and other activities during the weekend of March 31_April 2, 1967. The event was to set the scene for the meeting and to allow everyone to become acquainted in an informal setting. The entertainers were a group from Albany, a West Texas town with considerable wealth and a tradition of sending its children to eastern universities such as Yale and Princeton. The town put on an annual pageant called the Fandango. It portrayed the settling of Texas in an impressive fashion, in some instances placing as many as 150 people on the stage of a natural amphitheater outside of town. The Albany group was asked to perform the Fandango for the ambassadors.²⁸

Persuading Johnson that the group was sufficiently professional fell to Pryor. The president doubted the entertainment ability of the group, thinking that they probably appeared amateurish. Pryor agreed that they were amateurs in the original sense of the word—people who performed from a love of their subject—but according to Pryor the group made up for any lack of professionalism with "enthusiasm and quality of composition." Johnson still demurred, and Pryor pushed for the group. "In my opinion," he told the president, "this will be one of the best things we've ever presented at the ranch, and I think we should do it." This forceful approach was hardly typical for Pryor or any other Johnson subordinate, and Johnson apprehensively agreed to the program.²⁹

The "Friendship Fiesta," as the party for the Latin American ambassadors was called, was well received, and Pryor's insistence paid dividends. At the April 1, 1967, barbecue, he rated the Fandango a "huge success." Johnson watched his audience for the first three numbers, and as he saw their enjoyment, he relaxed and began to enjoy the show. By the end of the program, Johnson was cheering louder than anyone. As the pageant ended, the president and first lady went forward "strictly out of their hearts," Pryor remembered, and embraced the performers, a gesture that the Latin Americans, who attached great significance to the abrazo, appreciated. To see the U.S. president hugging common people made a strong impression on them.³⁰

In The Vantage Point, Johnson rated the meetings at Punta del Este, which took place two weeks later, as an important success. In what he remembered as the most intensive three days of meeting he had outside of a crisis, Johnson forged a new direction in relations with Latin America. He believed that the discussions led to a different understanding between Latin American leaders and the United States, as the agreements reached at Punta del Este clearly illustrated that the United States "would now be a junior partner in Latin American economic and social development," Johnson wrote in his memoirs. He could envision a Latin American common market, a goal that was a cornerstone of the president's policy for the region but that has never come to fruition. While the ranch played no direct role in the negotiations, the barbecue for the ambassadors helped paved the way for Johnson's objectives.³¹

Official state barbecues also carried forward the practices established during the Erhard event. During the week following the 1964 election, President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz of Mexico came to the ranch for a visit, and a barbecue was scheduled. The theme of this event accented the shared border between Texas and Mexico. Mexican and U.S. flags lined the road above the barbecue area. The tables at the barbecue were decorated with flowers and covered with white linen, and piñatas hung from the tent. The 243-person guest list featured every important Hispanic in the Southwest, including U.S. Representative Henry B. Gonzalez of Texas; U.S. Representative Joseph Montoya of New Mexico; numerous state dignitaries; and, seemingly, every important Spanish-surnamed attorney in Texas. National leaders and other figures made the trip as well. Governor Edmund P. "Pat" Brown of California and Gene Autry also attended, as did comedian Milton Berle. Brown was added to the list to emphasize the connections between California and Mexico, while Montoya represented his home state as well as long-time Johnson ally U.S. Senator Clinton P. Anderson of New Mexico, who could not attend.³²

The entertainment featured an array of cross-border performers. Ricardo Gomez, a talented flamenco guitarist who was also a psychology major at the University of Texas, played. A candidate for Miss Texas 1964, Mary Moore Swink, performed classical Spanish dances "as well as any professional Mexican dancer," in Pryor's estimation. Los Delfines performed with Maria de Lourdes of Mexico City, as did Marimba Ecos de Chiapas of Brownsville, Texas. Clint Harlow displayed his trained sheepdogs; the finale involved monkeys riding the sheepdogs as the animals herded sheep. The featured performer was singer Eddie Fisher, a nationally known singer who was also a strong supporter of the 1964 Democratic ticket and who was thrilled to be invited to the ranch to perform. Fisher became tangled in the microphone cord as he walked up to the stage. Lyndon Johnson jumped up to help him, and Fisher noted that it was the first time a president of the United States had helped him get untangled.³³

The introduction of a well-known performer such as Fisher again illustrated the differences between presidential barbecues and their senatorial and vice presidential predecessors. Fisher appealed to a national mainstream audience. An urban ethnic who had been married to film star Elizabeth Taylor, he had no prior identification with the West, Texas, or even the South. Fisher had a national reach that even Johnson's favorite country and western performers such as Eddy Arnold—the Tennessee Plowboy, who had played at the barbecue held in honor of the Pakistani leader Mohammed Ayub Khan in 1961—did not share. The selection of Fisher demonstrated that, in effect, after Cliburn the entertainment at the ranch had adopted the levels of network television and popular culture rather than of the western region of the nation. It was no longer simply entertainment that Johnson enjoyed. The choice of entertainment represented the presidency and was subject to a range of commentary.

There was only a minor political agenda for the 1964 meeting with Diaz Ordaz; the visit was mainly designed to let the two presidents become acquainted and share ideas.³⁴ Johnson's ties to Diaz Ordaz's predecessor, Adolfo Lopez Mateos, were very close, and the incoming Mexican president felt the need to establish his own relationship with the leader of the powerful nation to his north. The ranch setting, criticized by Ambassador McGhee for its informality as a venue for the Erhard visit, was very suitable for the Mexican president. It was a type of locale familiar to upper-class Mexicans, most of whom owned similar properties, and the setting made cultural sense to them.

The ranch provided an excellent venue for the meeting. The issues the two leaders discussed took the conversations far beyond the level of merely getting acquainted. Trade, immigration, and the final details of the long and complicated El Chamizal settlement topped the agenda. Treating and cleansing Colorado River water before it entered Mexico, the change in river flow that resulted from the opening of Glen Canyon Dam, and the filling of Lake Powell earlier in 1964 also presented important cross-border issues. The issue of Fidel Castro's Cuba loomed large between the two leaders, for Mexico was the only country in the hemisphere that retained relations with what the United States considered an outlaw nation.³⁵ Again, the backdrop of the ranch and its staged informal atmosphere allowed for productive interaction.

Private events with immense political ramifications also took place at the ranch. These were visits during which the full complement of public activities did not occur but during which the ranch served as the backdrop for important affairs of state. One such visit was that of Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in January, 1968. Early in 1967, the geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East had begun to intensify. After Egypt closed the Strait of Tiran—Israel's sea access to the Indian Ocean and Asia—to Israeli shipping, war seemed inevitable. When it finally broke out on June 5, 1967, the world was astonished to find the small and vastly outnumbered nation trouncing its opponents. The Six-Day War of June, 1967, ended in a resounding Israeli victory that enhanced the already strong ties between the United States and Israel and dramatically altered the balance of power in the Middle East. The two leaders had much to discuss six months after the stunning military victory.

Johnson sought privacy for these discussions, but he was dissuaded by his staff. Initially the president had planned to invite the press to the ranch during the Eshkol visit, but he changed his mind and planned to bar the press. However, there were consequences to such a change, press secretary George Christian informed Johnson. During such a visit, the ranch served as a seat of government, and barring the press would be tantamount to barring them from the White House itself. By the time Johnson sought to prohibit the press, Christian had already informed the Israeli and White House press corps that they would be permitted to report on the events at the ranch. Rather than pursue a strategy that he believed would generate negative publicity, Christian recommended that the press be allowed on the grounds but confined to the hangar, a long-standing Johnson strategy for keeping the press out of the action.³⁶ Reluctantly, Johnson assented.

Eshkol and Johnson had much in common. Both were men from lands of little rain, and both had overcome much in their personal and political lives. They had an intuitive understanding of each other. Johnson's favorite question of foreign political leaders had long been about the amount of rainfall in their land; he was, George Reedy reflected, obsessed with water. "After all, when you lived in the Hill Country, boy, you got worried about water because there wasn't much water there," Reedy said. As a man from an arid land, Eshkol could answer with a response Johnson understood and appreciated. The Israelis had invested deeply in transforming their desert into productive agricultural land. This was something Johnson himself sought to do at the ranch with his irrigation systems, something in which he invested much time, effort, and energy. The two leaders began what became a warm friendship.³⁷

This commonality in their places of origin was accentuated as the Johnsons drove Eshkol and his wife around the ranch. The Israelis remarked on the similarity of the climate, topography, and terrain of Texas to that of parts of Israel. Texas live oak trees and the olive trees of Israel looked much alike to the visitors, and although much of Israel was closer to sea level than the Hill Country, the vistas seemed remarkably similar. Ephraim "Eppy" Evron, second-ranking diplomat in the Israeli delegation to the United States and a close friend of Johnson, remarked: "[T]he [Hill] country reminded me of parts of the lower Galilee [with its] low hills and trees."³⁸ During the 1960s, the Galilee and the adjacent coastal plain contained the heart of Israeli agriculture, including many collective kibbutzim and moshavim, the communally owned agricultural enterprises that at the time produced most of Israel's exports to the rest of the world. Private property owner or member of a collective, these people faced the same kinds of problems with land and water. Both Johnson and Eshkol regarded such problems as having considerable significance, and this helped forge a bond between the two leaders.

As was apparent to the Israelis, the parade of visitors, foreign and domestic, enhanced the symbolic meaning of the LBJ Ranch. It became a place where Lyndon Johnson could illustrate values that he thought important to the American people and that he wanted the rest of the world, particularly foreign dignitaries, to associate with the United States. This was not Manhattan or Washington, D.C., but a mythic "real" America, full of people who worked for a living and gave their word when they shook hands. Johnson was skilled at orchestrating events at the ranch, using people from his own past and station in life to juxtapose with dignitaries to create the ambience of authenticity. The venue and circumstances of such events demonstrated links between the decisions at high levels of government and the needs and desires of ordinary people, a theme chief executives have sought to articulate before and since with varying degrees of success.

Yet the events and the barbecues that were often the centerpiece of ranch activities were hardly spontaneous; often they seemed choreographed with a kind of folksy humor and activity designed to lull visitors into thinking that the American president was less sophisticated and able than he actually was. Cactus Pryor, the self-proclaimed George Jessel of the campfire circuit, played an important role in putting everyone at ease. With his brand of wit and humor, descended directly from the style of the renowned Will Rogers, Pryor seemed uniquely American. The selection of the entertainment, often from Texas but after the Erhard affair always including a national headliner, also reflected the changing iconography of the ranch. Throughout his term in office, Johnson successfully combined the down-home nature of the staged events at the ranch with its natural setting to increase the vast tactical advantages he had in political discussion on his home turf. He could show Texas and then negotiate with other leaders who were charmed by the setting and surroundings. It was a solid strategy that effectively served Johnson and American national interests.

The ranch also served as backdrop for another category of events, those that involved the policies of Johnson's vast domestic programs, usually labeled the Great Society programs. Drawing on personal experience, Johnson used the Hill Country to illustrate the problems of rural America and of the poor. His memories of the Hill Country were of an economically and culturally impoverished place, its conditions not wholly alleviated by the construction of Hill Country dams and the projects of the Rural Electrification Administration. In Johnson's view, these New Deal-era programs had begun to bring his home region into the twentieth century, but when he arrived in office, he realized that much more remained to be accomplished not only in the Hill Country but in the nation at large. The War on Poverty and myriad other Great Society programs were among the results.³⁹

Among such programs, education took a preeminent position. Johnson was "a nut on education," observed Hubert H. Humphrey. "He thought education was the greatest thing he could give to the people; he just believed in it, like some people believe in miracle cures." George Reedy agreed: "Johnson had an abnormal superstitious respect for education." His January 20, 1965, State of the Union address made these feelings clear. Of all the programs that Johnson perceived as crucial to the development of his Great Society, the Elementary and Secondary Education Bill, the first of some sixty education measures enacted during the Johnson administration, topped the list.⁴⁰

The provisions of this act typified Great Society programming. The bill initiated the Head Start program, which became a mainstay of preschool education for disadvantaged children, and offered funding for schools, school libraries, scholarship loans, and university extension programs. It tied education to practical goals and objectives and made education the focus of access to opportunity. Johnson strongly believed that education could serve as a great equalizer in U.S. society, a way to lift people beyond the limits of their backgrounds and give them a chance in mainstream society.

The legislative process that underlay passage of the bill was an example of all-encompassing coalition building at its most organized. Recognizing that he had a limited honeymoon period in which to operate, Johnson brought his leading priorities to Congress. He counted on a window of about six months, after which, he told Wilbur Cohen, "the aura and halo that surround me [will] disappear." Working to counter Republican opposition as well as constituencies that did not believe that the federal government should offer funding to parochial schools, Johnson relied on the political skills he had perfected in the House and Senate. The bill passed the House by almost two to one on a roll call vote on March 26, 1965. On April 9, the Senate approved the House bill by a seventy-three to eighteen majority. One of the centerpieces of Johnson's Great Society awaited his signature.⁴¹

Johnson seized on his personal history as the proper backdrop for the signing of this legislation. The Education Bill was crucial to the future of the nation, Johnson believed, and for the signing ceremony Johnson again brought the nation to his home country as a way to illustrate the importance of the bill. The one-room Junction Schoolhouse, down the road from the ranch, had taken on an iconographic significance. It had come to represent every one-room schoolhouse in the nation, every place that adults associated with fond memories of their childhood experience, every place where people could rise on the basis of their merits—if they had the sort of assistance that Johnson's Great Society could provide.

April 11, 1965, the day of the signing, was a "gold-star" day in their lives, Lady Bird Johnson wrote. The Johnsons had arrived at the ranch late the night before; the signing ceremony was scheduled for the following afternoon. At about 2:30 p.m., two chartered Greyhound buses and several school buses arrived, bringing many of Johnson's former students from his days as a high school teacher in Cotulla and Houston. Among the passengers were two of his closest assistants from his time as a congressional aide, Gene Latimer and L. E. Jones.⁴² It was a reunion of a sort that none of the students could have ever expected. The man who had driven them mercilessly but lovingly had proven what he had always asserted: if anyone in America worked hard enough, they could achieve anything to which they aspired.

Around 4:00 p.m., the Johnsons and their entourage arrived at the Junction Schoolhouse. The schoolhouse had become the summer home of a woman from the Hill Country and her husband, who had retired to Oklahoma, and they graciously permitted its use for the ceremony. The Johnsons had the grass mowed, and spring flowers, resplendent in yellow and purple, graced the front steps. Bess Abell had found a number of the old double desks that were typical of such schools and placed one or two out front. "It was an accurate, corny, warm setting," Lady Bird Johnson wrote, a fitting location for a piece of legislation so important to Johnson's conception of the nation.⁴³

A crowd of about three hundred witnessed the signing. Among the guests were "Miss Katie" Deadrich Loney, the teacher on whose lap Johnson sat at the age of four in the schoolhouse, and Sam Fore, a legendary South Texas editor from whom the young Johnson had sought political advice. Tourists mingled with former Johnson students, one of whom had flown his Piper Cub airplane in from Yazoo City, Mississippi, for the ceremony. The Johnsons had a picnic table and benches brought from the ranch, and Lyndon Johnson sat at the table and faced the television cameras. Next to him sat Miss Katie. "As President of the United States," Johnson said from the picnic table, "I believe deeply that no law I have signed or will ever sign means more to the future of America." He signed the bill and gave the single pen he used to Miss Katie, who had begun his education a little more than fifty years before. Understanding its personal as well as national significance, Lady Bird Johnson termed the ceremony "a moment to remember."⁴⁴

The Education Bill, Johnson's personal favorite among the legislation he initiated, typified the ways in which Johnson used the ranch to create public symbolism. The signing of the bill intertwined his personal experiences and rise to power with his aspirations for the nation, highlighting a "bootstraps" philosophy that called for a little help from a friendly federal government. This message, of overcoming adversity once opportunity was assured, lay at the core of what Johnson believed and sought to transmit to the nation.

The Hill Country and his ranch were central to that formulation. In his view of the world, these places, with their close sky and broken country, reminded him of essential truths. Lyndon Johnson packaged those truths through barbecues, bill signings, and other events. He used them to communicate a genuine Americanness, based as much in myth as in reality, to the American public and the world. No prior president had his finger so tightly on the myths of the nation, so no prior leader understood how important was the feeling of the lost past that could be recaptured. For none of them had this conscious manipulation of symbols been so important.

To Lyndon Johnson, his ranch was a showcase for what was best about the nation. It highlighted the kind of optimism for which he, his Great Society programs, and indeed his time were famous. Utilizing the ranch as a means to convey the "real" America not only to foreigners but to Americans themselves was a stroke of political genius that in postwar politics, before the ascent of Ronald Reagan, only Lyndon B. Johnson could have achieved. As he invented a history for himself, he invented one for his nation as well.